I have been looking into to get into buying a couple of apartment buildings. I found out that been in foreclosure for 1 year. Price is dirt cheap, I have had it checked out. No problems, only needs touch up work, and rehab kitchens. And possibly a second meter for heat to have both units pay for their own gas.
It is a 2 unit 3 bedroom units. Rents for 3 bedroom in the city go for 1000 to 1200 a month. Property is listed at 127,900.

Frustrating part is the financing. Any suggestions

Roomie’s not paying rent, or bills, he’s in denial about his 30day notice?How do I get my key and parking pass back, and him out after I gave 30 day notice, thinks he’s staying? He ruined my finances by my covering Nov. 0.shortage, plus utilities; All of Dec rent of 50., and all utilities paid no late fees. He’s not on lease. Paid no security deposit as agreed he would. Did not pay for parking pass key either. While he initially agreed paying 0 and 2 payments of 150 for security deposit to move in, only paid 0. Doesn’t see why he can’ ‘just continue to pay rent’? a master at passive aggression or just nuts. I’m moving on Dec.30 I’m concerned he’ll keep come back. What kind of legal preparation can I make?

I’m currently renting but once my apartment lease is up, I’d like to buy a manufactured home, but with the economy the way it is, I’m worried that will affect me negatively. I do have good credit, but only being 19 years old, there isn’t very much of it. So, what are my chances of getting approved for a mortgage? Also, if anyone knows, about how much do manufactured homes run for (2 or 3 bedroom, 2 bath)?
How thoughtful of you to seem so concerned, but nonetheless, I AM buying one, so screw off, eh?
I’ve had my job for a year and a half, and I’ve been working since I was 16. What both of you don’t understand is buying a house, lot and all, right now is NOT an option for me – but I’m sick of renting apartments, especially with how expensive they are. I know manufactured homes are cheap (I want new – not used) and I’m well aware that mobile home parks rent the lot – and guess what. The lot rent is A LOT less than half the amount I pay for rent at an apartment. I know someone who is paying for a manufactured home and renting the lot for it – and both payments combined is a good 300 dollars less then my rent.

This is an existing Bed & Breakfast home stay (NOT an inn). It is NOT zoned commercial. The previous owners used it as their primary residence and we would too. There are a total of 5extra bedrooms that we would provide transient lodging from. I’ve gotten differing answers from various lenders. We have been approved for an FHA loan. Since this IS our primary residence, can we Proceed?

I’ve had a lot of health problems that have completely messed up my finances so I need to move to a cheaper place. I still have 6 months left on my lease, though. How can I get out of my lease without being evicted?

Just watch TV for a couple of minutes and you’ll see how much bull#@&! is said. examples like:
money lenders saying " call us for loans, we don’t care what ur credit is, we trust you". or these medical companies that say university and clinically approved miracle pills. These ads are such bull%$#@. how can the government allow this false advertising to go on. are there not any governing bodies to oversee this? and if so why aren’t they being sued. It seems more like this is not the land of the free, but more like the land of the scam artist. I live out of the country for half the year and its very embarassing when foreigners laugh and make fun of how america is full of scams and people that abuse the system, and you can’t argue back because they’re right.

Here is an accounting article I found in The New York Times. What do you think about it? Share your thoughts and opinions with me please..and any insight you may have on the subject.

Should we blame the accountants?

Surprises multiplied as the subprime problem of 2007 grew into the credit disruption of 2008. It is one thing to have a bank report losses because some of the loans on its balance sheet went bad. That is part of the business of banking. It is something else, however, for a bank to report a multibillion-dollar loss from taking some risk that had never been mentioned in its financial statements.

Haven’t we seen this movie before, involving a company called Enron? Didn’t Congress pass a law requiring that the problem of off-balance-sheet mysteries be solved?

“After Enron, with Sarbanes-Oxley, we tried legislatively to make it clear that there has to be some transparency with regard to off-balance-sheet entities,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and chairman of the Senate securities subcommittee, said this week. “We thought that was already corrected and the rules were clear and we would not be discovering new things every day.”

Senator Reed has sent letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets United States accounting rules, and the International Accounting Standards Board, which does the same for most of the rest of the world, asking detailed questions about what went wrong and how it should be fixed. Getting together answers to his questions could provide the S.E.C. with a road map to determine where the rules failed, as well as where companies failed to apply the rules properly.

One rule that needs scrutiny now — called 46-R — was passed after Enron. Essentially, it says companies can keep “variable special purpose entities” off their balance sheets if they conclude that the bulk of the rewards, and risks, lie with others.

But companies are supposed to evaluate those estimates regularly, and change the accounting if the conclusions change. A risk that seemed remote last year can seem all too real now, and that explains a lot of the surprising write-offs.

Suddenly, losses are booked. Investors learn that a company has taken a risk only after the risk has gone bad.

That should not happen. The rules require that companies make some disclosures about off-balance-sheet vehicles even if they do not put them on their financial statements. They should discuss factors like the nature of the risk they face and the maximum loss that is possible.

But those disclosures have often not been made, or have been made in such a general way as to be meaningless. The S.E.C., and perhaps the Congress, should ask some companies to explain their earlier lack of disclosures.

They will hear that companies thought the amounts involved were unimportant — “not material” in the jargon of accounting. They may find out that some managements did not understand all the risks that were being taken. And they may find that some companies failed to disclose risks that they should have disclosed.

The 2007 annual report of the State Street Corporation, a Boston bank, is a model of what disclosures should be, in laying out the risks of some special purpose entities it set up to hold assets. Those entities, known as conduits, borrowed money to pay for the assets, with State Street promising to come up with the cash if the conduits could not find other lenders.

In the report, State Street explains why it has not taken any write-off on those conduits, which contain .8 billion in what the bank believes to be high-quality assets.

It can avoid consolidation because other investors would suffer the first million of losses — about one-tenth of 1 percent of the assets. After that, State Street would be on the hook. But State Street says its model indicates defaults on the underlying assets will not cost that much.

So long as the conduits stay off its balance sheet, State Street does not have to adjust them to reflect the market value of the assets in the conduits. But if State Street ever concludes that defaults are likely to be a little higher — say 0 million, only three-tenths of a percent of assets — it will have to put the assets on its balance sheet. And if it does that, it will have to write them down to market value.

At the end of last year, State Street estimates that market value was about 0 million below face value. Had it been forced to consolidate the conduits, that loss would have been posted, leaving a write-down of about 0 million after taxes. About 40 percent of the bank’s 2007 profits would have vanished.

As those assets eventually came due, State Street might have been able to recoup some or all of those losses if there were few defaults. But that could happen years later.

The basic strategy with these conduits was to borrow at lower short-term commercial paper rates and lend at higher long-term rates. That has long been one way banks make money, and sometimes lose it if credit markets move in the wrong direction.

This accounting rule let those risks vanish from the balance sheet because somebody else would suffer the first one-tenth of 1 percent of losses if any of the securities went bad. A rule that allows that to happen needs revision.

At least State Street investors now know about those risks, and have an explanation of why State Street thinks the market value of those assets is unreasonably low. Investors in many other banks, including some that have taken big write-offs, know much less about the risks those banks face.

There are many other issues in bank accounting, some stemming from the nature of market value estimates. JPMorgan Chase pointed out this week that it has taken reserves of 4.9 percent against the value of the leveraged loans on its books — twice that of some of its competitors. Maybe that means JPMorgan’s loans are not as good, but maybe it means that other banks are simply using more optimistic estimates. In a market where there are observable market values, the S.E.C. might want to ask how such disparities come to exist.

There are no perfect accounting rules, and forcing banks to consolidate everything might be unreasonable. But banks should have done more to let investors know the nature of the risks that were being taken. If the accountants had forced better disclosures, it is at least possible that managements would have spent more time evaluating the risks they were taking, and then made wiser business decisions.

Author Bio
Letter to the Editor

The Public Policy
By Peter Ferrara
Published 10/1/2008 12:08:01 AM
According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the financial crisis is all due to the Bush Administration’s "right wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no oversight, no regulation."

But at a hearing in the House in 2004, now available in video on YouTube, the Republicans sought to expand supervision and regulation, over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Federal regulators testified that the reckless financial practices of these two government-sponsored enterprises threatened the entire financial system. Republican after Republican called for a new regulatory authority to supervise Fannie and Freddie and impose standard bank regulation on them.

Franklin Raines, the former Clinton budget director who went on to serve as chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae, testified that the mortgage-related securities of these two organizations, which have now rocked the entire financial world, were "riskless." During his tenure, Raines criminally led Fannie Mae to falsify its books so that he would qualify for excessive bonuses and compensation eventually totaling million.

But the Democrats excoriated the Republicans for criticizing the wonderful practices of Fannie and Freddie that had been so successful in achieving their goals of affordable housing. The Republican concerns for safety and soundness were dismissed as trumped up efforts to frame the brilliant leadership of Mr. Raines, and said to show once again that Republicans don’t care about the middle class and the poor. Barney Frank, now chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, foolishly laughed off concerns over safety and soundness without offering any evidence to rebut these concerns. Instead, he shamefully led the Democrats in attacking the regulators, who had provided the evidence that Fannie and Freddie were increasingly threatening the safety and soundness of the entire financial system.

The following year John McCain was one of three co-sponsors of legislation to impose such regulatory supervision and controls over Fannie and Freddie. The Bush Administration supported this as well, in one of its four attempts to win legislative approval for such expanded regulatory authority. But the Democrats shouted these proposals down as an assault on affordable housing for the middle class and the poor.

So it was the Republicans who tried time and again to expand proper regulatory controls to prevent this crisis. And it was the Democrats who stopped them because such regulation threatened their policy of turning Fannie and Freddie into welfare programs. It is Chairman Barney Frank, not SEC Chairman Chris Cox, who should resign for his shameful and stupid role in creating this crisis. And if Franklin Raines is not prosecuted and sent to prison for his naked thievery, then we must let all of the Enron convicts out of jail and issue them a national apology.

Apart from this, there is no other instance in which deregulation or lack of regulation played any significant role in the current crisis. Just what "no regulation" was Nancy Pelosi talking about? Does she want the government to stare over the shoulders of all lenders and tell them what loans they can make and what loans they can’t? Going all the way back to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, it is the government led by the Democrats and their "affordable housing" policies that have imposed increasingly onerous regulations on lenders, forcing them to make shaky loans to increasingly dubious borrowers on increasingly lax terms, and it is the failure of precisely these loans that is at the root of the current crisis. These are the people that are now going to save us with wise, judicious supervision and regulation?

On exactly what issue is Nancy Pelosi any more knowledgeable than Sarah Palin? Pelosi can’t nearly match Palin’s expertise on energy policy, nor Palin’s record in cutting taxes and spending. In over 20 years in Congress, the ultra-left San Francisco Democrat has distinguished herself only in the mindless repetition of brain dead political propaganda, such as we saw at the beginning of this commentary.

The Democrats have assailed former Senator Phil Gramm for leading the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. But repeal of that outdated regulatory relic from the 1930s, which sought to separate commercial banking from investment banking, has played no role in this financial crisis. Even Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has said as much. Indeed, exactly to the contrary, repeal of Glass-Steagall has been a major factor helping to counter the crisis. It is precisely that repeal that allowed Bank of America to buy out Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan to buy out Bear Stearns, and Barclays Bank to work on buying up the remains of Lehman Brothers. This silly charge is just old, Soviet style propaganda, completely divorced from reality, calculated to mislead the gullible

I plan on getting my own place towards October, right now Im just saving my paychecks and looking around for places making notes.

Really other than my finances, what else do I have to be ready for?

I purchased the property at a 13.5% cap rate, 63% LTV with an investor loan last week. It’s non owner occupied, I’m self employed my fiance has a regular job. The property will cash flow 0 with a 30 year loan at 7%, 0 for a 20 year loan. I’d like to finance it without having to use any of our incomes from our jobs to pay back the loan, just the income from the property. Any suggestions on who to start talking to, and what action to take. Should I get a commercial loan? Or a residential loan with a commercial appraisal? I’m looking for 75% LTV after the refi.

I have good credit now and trying to use it to purchase a 4 unit apartment complex as an investment property. I have seen some banks still offering 100% financing. Is this something that some banks are still doing to keep afloat in these trying times? Also what is the minimum I will have to have down to purchase this complex since its considered a primary residence with an FHA loan?

Here comes all the "empty suit" references from the rightwing mouthbreathing, knuckledragging squad.
John McCain/Bush stands for a third term of the disasterous Bush administration, the guy should be stuffed and mounted and put in a museum somewhere in South Carolina.

Here are some of Senator Barack Obama’s positions:

Opposed the Iraq war from the start.
Voted to end the war in Iraq.
Supports capturing and killing Osama Bin Laden.
Favors a 00 tax cut for every working American family.
Will implement tax form simplification to reduce filing time.
Provide tax credit for all middle class homeowners.
Provide a tax cut for all families making less than ,000 a year.
Amend NAFTA to protect American workers.
Amend NAFTA to strengthen environmental protections.
Providing Flex Ed training accounts for workers.
Extending Trade Adjustment assistance to service workers.
Supported Patriot Employer Act of 2007 that gives tax credits to large companies that keep workers here in America.
Double funds for basic federal research.
Implement a long term research and development tax credit.
Invest in green technologies.
Reduce carbon emission gases.
Tackle the challenges of global warming.
Create an energy focused youth jobs program.
Create Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Extend the Production Tax Credit.
Expand Broadband into every community.
Keep the Internet tax free.
Expand high speed internet access in rural areas.
Fight for passage of Employee Free Choice Act.
Ensure freedom to unionize.
Would overturn "Kentucky River" classifications of Bush’s NLRB
Protect rights of striking workers.
Increase the mininum wage to index it to inflation.
Crack down on predatory lenders.
Provide a universal mortgage tax credit for homeowners who don’t itemize.
Sign the Stop Fraud Act to prevent lending fraud.
Mandate accurate loan disclosure.
Create a fund to protect people from foreclosures.
Close the bankruptcy loophole for mortgage companies.
Establish a credit card rating to improve disclosure.
Ban utilateral credit card charges.
Apply interest rate only to future debt.
Prohibit credit card interest on fees.
Prohibit Universal defaults.
Require prompt and fair crediting of cardholder payments.
Protect working people from unfair bankruptcy laws.
Ban executive bonuses for bankruptcy companies.
REquire disclosure of pension investments.
Cap outlandandish interest rates on payday loans.
Implement legislation to drive unscrupulous lenders out of business
Create a bankruptcy exemption for people that went broke because of medical bills.
Double funding for after school programs.
Extend Family and Medical Leave Act.
Encourage states to adopt Paid leave.
Expand the Child Care Tax Credit
Supports ratification of UN Convention Rights of Persons With Disabilities.
Supports independent, community based living for people with disabilities.
Expand educational opportunites for people with disabilities.
Expand job opportunities for people with disabilities.
Strengthen civil rights enforcement.
Sign into law the Fair Pay Act.
Sign law reversing recent SCOTUS rulings that permitted discrimination against women.
Sign law reversing recent SCOTUS rulings that permitted discrimination against racial minorities.
Strengthen federal hate crimes legislation.
Eliminate the sentence disparities regarding crack cocaines.
Establish drug courts for first time, non violent offenders.
Create a prison to work incentive for those transitioning back into society.
Passed a law to prohibit the practice of racial profiling.
Supported reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act.
Opposes all discriminatory barriers to voting.
Helped reform death penalty system in Illinois to protect innocent people on death row.
Voted to ban cluster bombs.
Provide high quality affordable child care to families.
Will quadrulple Early Head Start funding.
Will increase Head Start funding.
Creates early learning challenge grants.
Abolish overly rigid teach to the test curriculum in schools.
Improve accountability in public schools.
Invest in intervention strategies to reduce dropout rates in schools.
Increase funding for afterschool programs.
Supports Step Up program to increase summer learning opportunities.
Support English language learner programs.
Expand college outreach programs.
Create teacher service scholarships.
Requires all public schools to be accredited.
Create teacher residency programs.
Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit for higher education.
Streamline financial aid application.
Introduced legislation to increase Pell Grant to ,100.
Reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.
Confront deforestation.
Promote carbon sequestration.
Accelerate commercialization of plug in hybrids.
Promote development of commercial scale renewable energy.
Invest in low emission coal plants.
Transition to new electric digit grid.
Double science funding for clean energy products.
Create Green Jobs Cor

Let’s start with the facts

(1) I have about 120k in student loan debt from law school and undergrad. I am only paying what I can on this right now, which is about per month, which is only paying off the interest on one of the loans. Please no lectures on the magic/horror of compounding interest.

(2) I graduated from a respectable law school in May of 2008 and passed two state bar exams on the first try.

(3) I applied to hundreds of attorney jobs every year through out law school and after graduation. There really aren’t any jobs out there.

(4) I did get a job though, but it’s probably the lowest paying attorney job in the world at k per year at the least respected firm in the county. It’s sort of out in the sticks, but still close enough for me to drive to everyday. The guy is a terrible lawyer and a werido, but whatever, I need a job. There was supposed to be a bonus every 10 weeks involved, but I figured out on the first day that there will never be a bonus because the bonus is based on collecting payments from the clients, who never pay their bill. The work is family and criminal law, which is not what I set out to do, but it’s ok I guess. I took this job only about 2 months ago and the firm is apparently financially insolvent and can’t always pay all the employees on time, but so far I’ve always been paid.

(5) I’m taking an accounting course at the local community college with an eye toward applying to a business program, maybe an mba.

My question is, should I apply to an mba program? I have little or no business experience because I applied to law school right out of college and I’m worried that even after graduating with an MBA I still won’t be able to find a job and will just be in more student loan debt.

Should I quit working at this firm because it has such a terrible reputation? My current plan is to quit as soon as he can’t pay me, but my alternative to working there would probably be document review, which is a career-killer from what I’ve heard but pays more (/hr or something). Should I keep working at this firm even if he can’t pay me? Jobs are so very scare these days, especially for attorneys in my region.

Should I register, study for, and take another state’s bar exam in the hope that passing that will finally make me attractive enough to another law firm and they will pay me a real salary?

I also have my real estate license. If this joker can’t pay me, should I quit and start selling condos and homes and leasing commercial spaces?

Keep in mind that I’m actively applying for jobs elsewhere. Feel free to ask additional questions.

I would prefer it if someone with a few years of business or legal experience would answer this question.

regarding the end of the recession that the government says is happening:

‘Be Prepared for the Worst’
Ron Paul, 10.29.09,

The large-scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly.

Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession.

A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. I fear that our stimulus and bailout programs have already done too much to prevent the economy from recovering in a natural manner and will result in yet another asset

Anytime the central bank intervenes to pump trillions of dollars into the financial system, a bubble is created that must eventually deflate. We have seen the results of Alan Greenspan’s excessively low interest rates: the housing bubble, the explosion of subprime loans and the subsequent collapse of the bubble, which took down numerous financial institutions. Rather than allow the market to correct itself and clear away the worst excesses of the boom period, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury colluded to put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars. Those banks and financial institutions that took on the largest risks and performed worst were rewarded with billions in taxpayer dollars, allowing them to survive and compete with their better-managed peers.

This is nothing less than the creation of another bubble. By attempting to cushion the economy from the worst shocks of the housing bubble’s collapse, the Federal Reserve has ensured that the ultimate correction of its flawed economic policies will be more severe than it otherwise would have been. Even with the massive interventions, unemployment is near 10% and likely to increase, foreigners are cutting back on purchases of Treasury debt and the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet remains bloated at an unprecedented trillion. Can anyone realistically argue that a few small upticks in a handful of economic indicators are a sign that the recession is over?

What is more likely happening is a repeat of the Great Depression. We might have up to a year or so of an economy growing just slightly above stagnation, followed by a drop in growth worse than anything we have seen in the past two years. As the housing market fails to return to any sense of normalcy, commercial real estate begins to collapse and manufacturers produce goods that cannot be purchased by debt-strapped consumers, the economy will falter. That will go on until we come to our senses and end this wasteful government spending.

Government intervention cannot lead to economic growth. Where does the money come from for Tarp (Treasury’s program to buy bad bank paper), the stimulus handouts and the cash for clunkers? It can come only from taxpayers, from sales of Treasury debt or through the printing of new money. Paying for these programs out of tax revenues is pure redistribution; it takes money out of one person’s pocket and gives it to someone else without creating any new wealth. Besides, tax revenues have fallen drastically as unemployment has risen, yet government spending continues to increase. As for Treasury debt, the Chinese and other foreign investors are more and more reluctant to buy it, denominated as it is in depreciating dollars

The only remaining option is to have the Fed create new money out of thin air. This is inflation. Higher prices lead to a devalued dollar and a lower standard of living for Americans. The Fed has already overseen a 95% loss in the dollar’s purchasing power since 1913. If we do not stop this profligate spending soon, we risk hyperinflation and seeing a 95% devaluation every year.